The White House May Have Done Just About All It Can on Gun Violence

By Philip Bump

June 19, 2013

Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech Tuesday celebrating the administration's push for new restrictions on gun ownership. Which could be seen as a little like an athlete stopping mid-race to say that he already considered himself a winner. While in sixth place.

To be fair, the administration has done perhaps as much as it can to make progress on an issue that the Senate couldn't complete and the House never started. That was the real goal of Biden's speech -- to point out that the president's January announcement of 23 executive actions on gun violence had almost completely gone into effect. (As The Washington Post noted, the venue for the speech was the same one where the list was announced.)

Completed on that to-do list -- developed by a task force Biden led -- were some concrete measures, like publishing data on lost guns and allowing research on gun violence. Others were more aspirational: improving incentives, encouraging dealers, supporting development of gun safety technology. The two still-incomplete items: finalizing rules around insuring mental health coverage in group health plans and confirming a new director to run the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.